vin] The Evolution of Transcendence 225 



and, starting from the nature of immanence, it is with 

 this we must therefore deal next. 



A being becomes truly personal as soon as it can en- 

 visage itself as simply being, apart from the temporal 

 series in which, for the most part, its activities are real- 

 ised. For such a being the temporal series grows more 

 and more, not an illusion, but a partial appearance, a 

 mirror-image darkly seen, of the Eternal series which 

 expresses activity without introducing before and after. 

 Eternal life is appreciation of the Now. Immanence 

 looks to the future for completion, regarding the tem- 

 poral series ; transcendence knows the Whole in spite of 

 temporal limitation, because it acts and moves in the 

 Eternal series. 



Let us then start as we must with the material. 

 Whatever be the nature of matter and, as we have 

 said, no amount of rarefying of matter by physical abs- 

 tractions will make it any the less matter we see that 

 it expresses the nature of God in self -surrender; in self- 

 limitation for the sake of others. Matter, per se, is 

 meaningless; it only acquires meaning from the purpose 

 that it evidences. Looked at as part of a whole, as the 

 means whereby the temporal series acquires significance 

 in relation to the eternal, it has its place, fulfilling an 

 inescapable need. There must be self-limitation, there 

 must be determination, if something new and eternal 

 is to come into being; and matter, whatever its real 

 nature, expresses this, and fulfils the need. Matter is the 

 material of God's work, the necessary evidence that His 

 self-limitation is real when He makes a man. 



In, and as the result of, these conditions, men come 

 into being. 



But we, to share God's experience, must be self- 

 limiting; and the creation presupposes such a sharing 

 eventually. 



To be self-limiting men must be free; love must 



MCD. 15 



